


A Beautiful Anomaly (Held in Place)

by ValueTurtle



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 18:33:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/738804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValueTurtle/pseuds/ValueTurtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The abyss of history is deep enough to bury all the world.” -Paul Valery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beautiful Anomaly (Held in Place)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my "Fic Fest" over on tumblr. The quote was the prompt.

There’s a shift, he can feel it, after they visit a suburban street; after she hands him a cupcake, grinning up at him; after his mouth is full of sweet icing and gritty, crunchy sugar. It’s a buzzing at the edge of his hearing, his hearts beating too fast. It’s the air pressure falling, and the smell of ozone, and all he can do is take her her in his arms and kiss her. All he can do is take her hand and run.

 He hides her out of context, his 21st century girl – a beautiful anomaly sliding through time ( _but not his fingers, he’ll make sure of it, he has to_ ).

In New York – the first one, not the one so far in the future and their past - they stroll through Central Park. She laughs at their audacity, the way they’ve named it thus even though it’s on the outskirts of the city, and she beams at him as he lectures, softly, just for her. The skin of her neck is so close, he can see the goosebumps as they rise, the flush that spreads from her cheeks as his breath hits her skin. His fingers tremble where they splay against her back, feeling the slim width of her body, feeling the bumps and ridges of her delicate spine.

Later, pushed up against the TARDIS doors, she does not comment on his desperate mouth, or the sweet hopelessness of his lips.

On a nondescript hill, one of seven, they laze, drowsy in the sun. She looks beautiful in the light, he decides, the way it seems to cling to her, seems to settle in her hollows, the spaces he loves to follow with his tongue. When she asks him where they are, a mumbled question spoken as she rubs her eyes, he distracts her, as always, with his words:  _heaven_ , he says into her collarbone, so serious it hurts; she giggles and tugs at his hair, and doesn’t believe him.

Oh, the wonderful contradictions she contains, when she’s dressed in fine silks and lace; when her hair is spilling over her shoulders, the dark roots showing; when his head is under her skirts and she’s swearing, thickly in her London accent, and she’s frantic, her slippered foot brushing up and down his back. She doesn’t hear the opera, and neither does he – not with her thighs pressed against his ears – and they only notice the riots when they smell smoke on the air, hear the shatter of glass windows breaking. Running through the streets of Brussels, she hikes up her dress and holds his hand; she’s breathless as they avoid the mobs, joking about Europeans and their football.

She burns a light pink, burns  _rose_ , lying nude on some uninhabited beach, a millennia before the tourists will arrive. Sitting on the white-gold sand he looks out at the sea, his mind pasting in the jetties that will one day jut out from the coast, the boats bobbing on the swell of waves. She is oblivious, her eyes closed behind large sunglasses; the warm plastic bumps against his nose when he kisses her, and he doesn’t mind, he just angles his head and kisses away the taste of salt from her lips. In their bedroom he makes love to her on cool sheets and she hisses and laughs at the sting of his hands on her sunburn, rough and gentle and adoring her with every stroke.

He hides his anxiety in her, pushing it into her mouth; rubbing it into her skin; carding it through her hair. She accepts it, all, buries it inside her, keeping his worries safe behind her ribcage. She lets him lie awake, sleepless in panic, his only lifeline their entwined fingers. She lets him demand promises of her, ones she can’t possibly honour; her eyes are bright, her voice is earnest, and it breaks his hearts that she believes it.

She wraps her arms around him and pretends that they’re ok, that he’s not falling apart.

He hides her, his Rose, between the pages of history – a flower, pressed; a flower, preserved. And he knows it can’t go on.


End file.
